Pick a Winner

It looks like pixies will be a playable race in the new Heroes of the Feywild sourcebook.

This leaves me an uncomfortable place as a DM.

I am a fan of high-fantasy gaming. I am a firm believer that D&D (despite it’s war simulation roots) is a game of imagination and wonder. I love that make believe races galavant across fantastic worlds filled with magic. My conflict stems from the debate of what should be allowed as a player race. As a matter of personal taste I am not a fan of the idea of pixies as PCs but the same holds true for other offerings from WotC as well (Shardminds, I’m looking at you). There is a level of comfort and accessibility that such races seem to skew. Don’t get me wrong, both have a place in D&D but I am not sold on the idea of handling the day-to-day presence of a pixie or shardmind in an ongoing campaign. Playing DM word association, I look at such player races and think “disruption”.

Commenters: Where do you stand on new playable races? Do you restrict or are the doors wide open?

Old school! Older editions had the Complete Humanoids Handbook. 1st ed had Oriental Adventurers with some strange stuff in it. Dragon magazine in the day allowed half dyrad and half stary. This is strangely enough, not really ‘new new’. But nontheless gets a big m’eh out of me.

I can never understand why it’s not possible to simply say “We’re done”, at least with certain areas of the game. Do we really need 50 different playable races? I do understand, however, that I can, as DM simply decree that certain races, classes etc are not usable in my game, but I’d rather not have to do that.

Except that Complete Humanoids included such whacky and out there races as “bugbear” and “centaur”. The oddest were the dinosaur guys from the FR setting and even they were already an established part of the setting, something you could see if you were “fighting goblinkin” or “walking through the forest”. They had a regular place in the settings. I can honestly say that the Pixies of the Gumdrop Forest have never once played a big part of any game I’ve ever played.

I’m much more okay with pixies, dryads, and the other fey creatures because they’re things that are much more likely to already exist in a campaign. You don’t need to force them in. Shardminds, dragonborn, and wilden are much more at odds with the history or feel of a world.

“Hey, I’m a shardmind. No, I’m not new, my people have always been here. We’ve totally been around since the dawn of time. You’ve just missed us and we’ve avoided having an impact on every major historical event because we’re shy.”

That being said, adding new playable races and classes to the game is one of the things that they should be spending their time on. Its a nice, neutral thing that adds content and options for people who want them without requiring me to incorporate eratta or add new subsystems or once again relearn how to build a $&^%&# skill challenge again.

No DM is required to allow all of this crap in the game. Once upon time, we knew that and were okay with it. Just because someone had the Complete Book of Humanoids or the Complete Book of Short People or whatever doesn’t mean I had to allow it. It used to be okay for a DM to just say &$^*ing no. #%@$!!!

Its just one of those things that changes nothing unless you let it change things. Just like those campaign options books like Underdark and Open Grave and Draconomicon and The Plane a Little Above and Slightly to the Left. So, I guess I’m cool with it.

I laud a big H’RAY for allowing Pixies as a playable race. I’m with Joe… I’ve been around to see the 1ed Oriental Adventures (korobokuru, hengeyokai, spirit folk…), the 2e Complete Humanoids Handbook (wemics, mongrelmen, Ogre Magi, pixies!), and 3e’s attempt to make everything playable. I love the concept of pixies, and I love anything that isn’t “same old”.

Yes, those of you who love “traditional” fantasy worlds sneer and groan, but for someone who’s been playing nearly 25 years, traditional is so… BLAH! New options may not always mean better options, but who knows… some DMs may actually ENJOY trying new things.

It’s weird. I’ve played D&D for 24-years now and I seem to be coming full circle when it comes to flavor and content. I started basic, moved to increased magic, went to high-fantasy, then to wide open “its all fair game”, and now I am coming back around to wanting straight forward core races and classes.

I see several races as belonging in the “DM approval” bin, and that’s totally cool. The key is for the DM to ask the player to explain how this works. For me these are often the best additions to the table, because the player works hard to make that race a valid, interesting, and party-worthy choice. Why did your pixie leave the forest and frolicking to be an adventurer? It can be a compelling story. Oh, and I will torment everyone in LFR with my pixie fey-based warden. Oh, yes!

Torn on this issue. I like the idea of new races, but there does come a point where enough is enough (and I’ve “added” 3 new races recently). I don’t know how best to do this, but there should be tiers of races in any campaign setting. I can think of two approaches right now, and they’re not mutually exclusive.

One: Rarity
Here are the common, here are the uncommon (but doable), here are the rare (one or two in the whole world), and here are the ones not normally allowed.

I would agree with TheAngryDM. I’d rather see write-ups for more races than less since if you have a world that doesn’t follow the Middle-Earth standard, it saves you the work of having to come up with your own rules for something that isn’t an elf or dwarf or whatever. But it’s up to the DM to decide if a race (or class, or monster, or…) should be allowed in his world. I don’t have shardminds, wilden, or halflings(!) in my world, but the fact that there’s rules for them doesn’t bother me.

New race writeups only annoy me because then players want to play them. I feel very free to say NO to things that aren’t accessible, and make people play humanoids (though no Deva or fucking vampires either). I wouldn’t have a problem with a pixie per-se…it would be slightly obnoxious, but only if the wrong person is playing one. It could be an interesting story hook, or part of a group concept.

New playable races are all well and good, but they’re not for everybody. They should be in the splatbooks, not in the PHB. I honestly hated that Dragonborn and Tieflings were in the 4e PHB. They shouldn’t be the BASIC races. They should be saved for EXPANDING the game.

I am with Sun Tzu69 on this. I may never have liked Gnomes (almost on an instinctual level), but they at least make sense as a core race. Something that requires the copulation of two races that normally would find such a union more then slightly disagreeable simply doesn’t fit the necessary criteria for “core.”

While I have my doubts about the ability of a pixie to fulfil the “damage sponge” role of a tank, the “attack me!” attention-getting role seems like one they’d be a natural for. Build them for dodging rather than toughness, and that sounds like one fun, if unusual, party member.